Health officials don’t fear Ebola in Southern California

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A man walks past Mount Sinai Hospital on Aug. 4 in New York City. Doctors at the Manhattan-located hospital were reportedly testing a man who had recently returned from West Africa for the Ebola virus.

A member of Doctors Without Borders puts on protective gear at the isolation ward of the Donka Hospital in Conakry, Guinea, where people infected with the Ebola virus are being treated.

As the first two cases of the deadly Ebola virus disease ever in the U.S. touched down in Atlanta this week for treatment, fears of the West African illness spread across the country.

Even as local health officials assured residents that they’re prepared for the virus to reach the Southland, they also stressed it’s a highly unlikely scenario.

“I think we are well prepared to identify a problem should it occur and I think our hospitals are well prepared to take care of patients of this kind,” Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Dr. Jonathan Fielding said. “But remember this outbreak is happening in some of the poorest parts of the planet, where not only do they have limited healthcare facilities but people don’t have the same ideas about how disease is transmitted.”

Fielding added that Southern California residents are much more likely to get West Nile virus, which is in its peak summer season, than Ebola.

“I think our job as public health professionals is to be very vigilant but at the same time to be reassuring,” Fielding said.

The World Health Organization reported that 961 people have died in the recent outbreak of the Ebola virus in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. On Friday, the WHO declared the outbreak as an international public health emergency.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Emergency Operations Center moved to a level 1 response to the outbreak, which officials have called the worst in history. The CDC has also issued travel warnings urging Americans heading to the region to be cautious.

There is no vaccine or cure for the disease, but CDC officials have said they know how to control the spread of the virus. Two Americans who contracted the disease while helping patients in West Africa have been given an experimental medicine in an attempt to treat it. The pair are under quarantine at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

Though the disease has not reached American shores at this point, false alarms have turned up at local hospitals in New York and Ohio and for many it’s difficult not to worry.

“These outbreaks are of concern because everybody realizes that the world is globalized and we are connected. Everyone knows by example that diseases that have originated in one country can spread to another,” said Dr. Jonathan Samet, director of the University of Southern California Institute for Global Health. “The concern here in L.A. is we have so many people who travel and we have such a mobile population.”

But unless a person has traveled to West Africa recently, he or she should not be too worried, Samet said.

“It lies with our medical and public health communities at this point,” Samet said. “Certainly the ordinary citizen in Southern California should not be concerned.”

Health Officer for the Long Beach Department of Public Health Mitchell Kushner said the CDC’s screening at local airports is the most important step to keep the lid on the possible spread of the disease. Though Long Beach is not an international airport, Kushner said he has sent the CDC recommendations over just for added precaution.

“It’s just an awareness, just another thing to think about,” Kushner said. “But it’s highly unlikely.”

Dr. Ying-Ying Goh, acting health officer for the Pasadena Department of Public Health, said the agency is working to educate local hospitals about how to identify and treat Ebola cases should someone come to them with symptoms. She said the department has sent the CDC information and guidelines to all local health providers and has been in constant contact with CDC representatives, including participating in a conference call this week about procedures for quarantining patients.

“We are preparing ourselves to follow the guidelines and the protocols that the CDC is recommending,” Goh said. “As you can tell by looking at the CDC website it’s a daily update so things are changing rapidly. … Absolutely we are taking it day by day, step by step.”